Florida’s prison system remains in critical condition due to an emergency-level exodus of corrections officers, reported nonprofit news site Florida Phoenix, citing the US state’s acting corrections chief.

Up to 200 officers have left the system monthly, while prison wardens also “abandoned ship at high rates, five people in five months,” Ricky Dixon, who has been acting as the secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections since last November, was quoted as saying.

Without an equivalent reduction in Florida’s prison population, Dixon said, remaining officers are being forced to work “entirely excessive overtime hours” in understaffed conditions, reported Xinhua.

“We can’t properly operate the programmes we have if we don’t have the proper security staff to man them,” he added. – Bernama, February 15, 2022.